Chronology of the Armenian Genocide -- 1915 (July-September)

Click on the names of highlighted cities, towns, and other locations to view a map of the genocide.

July 1

2,000 Armenian soldiers in the Turkish Army used as laborers are massacred near the city of Kharput.

July 1

The first convoy of deportees leaves the seaport of Trebizond for the south.

July 1

The governor-general of Sivas announces that the first convoy of deportees from the city are to leave by July 5 in groups according to street residence. A total of 48,000 persons are deported. The governor, commissioner of police, two parliamentary deputies, the qadi (the chief religious judge), and the mufti (the religious chief) tell the Armenians that they were being resettled for the duration of the war in order to forestall any resistance.

July 2

Bands of 4,000 chetes operating out of the mountains around Erzinjan begin daily raids against the southward bound convoys of Armenian deportees.

For the record an official German protest is registered with the Grand Vizier. The protest is left unanswered by the Turkish government.

July 4

Neshed Pasha leaves Sivas with three regiments and artillery to subdue the Armenians resisting in Shabin-Karahisar.

July 5

In Diyarbekir 2,000 Armenian soldiers working in labor corps are killed.

July 5

The first convoy of deportees leaves the city of Sivas. Every day for 16 days an average of 400 families leave, the overwhelming majority being slain on route to the Syrian Desert. The last convoy departs from the city on July 20.

July 6

By this date up to 1,000 Armenian families had left Trebizond in convoys headed south.

July 7

The male members of 800 Armenian families in the town of Kharput are killed.

July 8

Zaven, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, appeals to the Minister of Justice, Ibrahim Bey, who replies that he cannot intervene in matters concerning the War Ministry.

The beginning of a four-day massacre in Mush under the combined orders of parliamentary deputy Elias, vice-governor Servet, and Governor-general Mustafa Abdulhalik Renda, Talaat's brother-in-law.

July 11

The Interior Ministry instructs that the Armenian villages be settled with Muslim immigrants.

July 12

The government advises all governors-general that Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor) District is saturated and that the rest of the deportees be routed to Kirkuk District in northern Iraq, to the south of Aleppo, and to the east of Syria.

July 12

Instructions are issued to distribute Armenian orphans to Turkish homes.

July 13

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins. During the whole month the greatest concentration and universalization of massacring and murdering occurs in every province of Turkey.

July 13

The last convoy, containing all the remaining Armenians in the city, leaves Kharput.

July 13

Zaven, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, is declined an audience with Talaat.

July 14

Jemal, Commander of Aleppo's Fourth Army Corps, protests to Dr. Reshid, the governor-general of Diyarbekir Province about the dumping of dead bodies in the Euphrates River and advises burial. From June 22 to July 17, a period of 25 days, a steady stream of bodies of massacred Armenians floats down the Euphrates River.

July 16

Bodies from Kharput Province and Erzerum Province float down the Euphrates to Jerablus, where they are seen and identified by German officers.

July 18

In the region of Dersim, 3,000 Armenians are killed by the Turks. Almost all of the large Kurdish population of Dersim refuses to participate in the massacres and even shelters many Armenians.

The registration and classification of all prisoners from Sivas is carried out. This was done in accordance with a directive in general circulation.

July

Behaeddin Shakir, chief of the Special Organization in Erzerum Province, telegrams Nazim Bey Resneli via Sabit Bey, the governor-general of Kharput Province, inquiring whether the Armenians deported from there are being exterminated or just being convoyed.

July

Behaeddin Shakir instructs the governor-general of Kastamonu Province to begin the deportation of the Armenians there.

July

Talaat informs the Ittihad party organization in Malatia explaining that half of the loot captured from the Armenians is being assigned to the Central Committee of Ittihad in Constantinople, and the other half is to be distributed to chetes. (On December 12, 1918, the Turkish newspaper, Sabah, reported that each chete in the Malatia area received as a result 15,000 Turkish pounds.)

July

Governor-general Reshid Pasha reports to the Interior Ministry that the deportation of the Armenians from Kastamonu Province is completed.

July

Behaeddin Shakir sends a cipher telegram to the governor-general of Adalia Province, Sabur Sami Bey, asking him what steps he was taking at a time, when in Erzerum, Van, Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Sivas, and Trebizond Provinces, not a single Armenian remains because they have all been sent in the direction of Mosul and Der-el-Zor (Deir el-Zor). Sabur sends a copy of the telegram to Talaat to show that he had received these indirect instructions.

July

The vice-governor of Yozgat District, in Angora Province, reports to the Interior Ministry that 68,000 Armenians had been slain in the district.

July

Sabit, the governor-general of Kharput Province, informs the Interior Ministry that all the road are filled with the bodies of women and children and time cannot be found to bury them.

July 28

The governor-general of Erzerum Province reports of widespread looting and rape.

July 28

The Interior Ministry issues a circular telegram instructing that the Muslim population be settled in the large Armenian villages.

Professor Kakig Ozanian of the American College and others from Marsovan (Merzifon), together with the Armenian community leader Dikran Diranian and others from Samsun, are transported to the prisons of Sivas to be killed.

July 30

A mass arrest of Armenians in the city of Angora is carried out. Those arrested are slain the next day at a place six hours distance from the city of Angora.

Ambassador Henry Morgenthau reports that on this day Talaat told him that the Ittihad Committee had carefully considered in all its details the matter of crushing the Armenians, and that the policy which was being pursued was that which had been officially adopted. He also told Morgenthau that the deportations were not the result of hasty decisions but of careful and prolonged deliberation. Talaat, moreover, indicated that three quarters of the Armenians had already been disposed of, and none were left in Bitlis, Van, and Erzerum.

August 2 to August 7

For six nights, Armenian prisoners, mostly intellectuals, held in Gok-Medrese in Sivas, which was a Seljuk structure in use as a temporary prison, were taken out and slain.

In response to unofficial German protests about large-scale murders, rapes, and tortures inflicted on the Armenian deportees on the highways, which was creating a bad impression on the Americans, a circular telegram is sent advising against attacking and raping Armenians on the highways.

August 3

Officials are instructed not to appropriate the 'abandoned goods' of the Armenians for personal use.

The listing of all real estate seized from the Armenians is requested by the Interior Ministry.

August 10

All the Armenians of Chorum are deported via Boghazli and Bozanti with the Syrian Desert their purportedly ultimate destination.

August 8 to August 12

The Armenian intellectuals imprisoned in the Sifahdiye Medrese (a Muslim religious school) in Sivas, are taken out from the city and slain. There were 36 extermination centers in the area of Sivas. 5,000 Armenian intellectuals imprisoned in the Gok Medrese and the Sifahdiye Medrese, both Seljuk structures in use as temporary prisons, were taken to these 36 execution centers and slain.

August 10

A circular telegram calls for the registration of all Muslim creditors of the Armenians.

Armenian women married to Turks are deprived of the right of inheritance.

August 11

The last of 84 Armenian intellectuals, who were brought to the Ayash prison and who over the course of the weeks had been taken out in small groups to be murdered at various times, was killed. The longest-held was in prison in Ayash for 105 days.

August 12

The end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. First day of the three day holiday of Bairam. No massacres were carried during these three days as it was time off for rest.

August 12

Enver reports that to date 200,000 Armenians had been slain.

August 12

In Aleppo Province 200,000 Armenian deportees are reported in transit to the desert

August 12

Boghos Nubar, a leading Armenian from Egypt, who had never been in Turkey, but who had been instrumental in Paris in pressing Turkey to introduce reforms in the Armenian provinces, was tried in absentia by a Turkish court martial and sentenced to death for treason.

Instructions are issued to avoid deportees from coming to rest near military installations.

August 13 to August 17

From the Central Prison of city of Sivas where many Armenian intellectuals, political leaders, and the leading men of the villages surrounding Sivas were imprisoned, 15,000 Armenians were taken out and slain in the 36 extermination centers of the region.

August 13

Instructions are sent out to the committees liquidating the 'abandoned goods' of the Armenians and directions given about methods for depositing the moneys obtained.

11,000 Armenian deportees from 26 different villages are observed at Afiyon-Karahisar.

September 24

The vice-governor of Bolu, Mufid, wires the Interior Ministry that the Armenians of Bolu are about to be deported.

September 24

The local Ittihad Secretary informs the Interior Ministry that 61,000 Armenians had been deported up to this date from Chankri and Angora. He also reports that the Muslims of Angora Province worship the Ittihad party and government for its committed deeds and that the same can be secured in Bolu if the same measures are taken there.

September 25

The Sanitation Division of the War Ministry requisitions all the medical implements and pharmaceuticals held by Armenians.